"Heart Attack City"

Me and my husband were sitting on our patio discussing the events of the day and our "bee" trouble that I found today. (Read my BEE blog) When all of a sudden I heard an awful sound....one that makes my stomach turn into a knot....something had one of my chickens! The scream and squall is a horrible sound! "Heart Attack City" They were out "free ranging" and we had left a trap loaded BUT NOT baited for months now...due to raccoon raiding that took seven of my prize hens in 2 1/2 weeks. We haven't had any trouble in months so hadn't bothered to bait it....but forgot about it...for goodness sakes! the chickens have been out since then but today HAD to be the day! Anyway, the one you see in my lap up top is Grey, he was my incubator hatch, that hatched back the first day of April. He is a roo.

It broke his leg :o( My husband is such a sweet guy;o) He helped me....usually he will get me things and leave me to the gory things but he actually helped me....I was impressed!

We mended Grey's leg with splits, bandage tape, gauze and of course trusty ole' duct tape! But in this case my husband grabbed the "shiny"silver duct tape to match Grey ;o)

Everything seems to be working okay, but it was broken pretty bad. He'll have to wear his make shift cast for quite some time and he'll probably have a bad limp :o) I'm just glad it wasn't his neck....

Now this pic is my husbands idea solely! Trust me the bottle was empty! He said I should put it on my blog and say it was Grey's anesthesia:O)

Well...my day didn't end there...I went to collect the eggs in the chicken pen, they were still out roaming and.....I ran into "Heart Attack City"! I backed out to find my husband and he was under his car changing the oil. I told him what I found and he told me where a stick was! No offer to help....and I didn't want to ask when he was so busy....so being me, I got the broken hoe (the one he used to get the last snake out) And you know what???that hook works wonderful! I felt like a snake handler!:O)

That was one BIG snake! It was heavy too!

Probably 'cause it was full on eggs. That's an egg in it's throat. And the snake is a garter snake or rat snake. I got it out of the pen only for it to go back in around the back way..after trying to steer it away.... it ended up going back out again on it's own...whew! time to renew the mothball treatment. If you want to keep snakes from around certain areas, you can use mothballs. Just please be careful of them because it contains a chemical that is NOT good. So don't use them around areas that you may plant one day. I throw them under the house and porch but ALWAYS leave a way out for the snakes, you don't want to encircle or trap them in. (Some snakes burrow into the ground and you don't know they are there). I usually space them out a few feet. But around my chicken pen I put about three or four into a small jelly jar and punch holes in the top then lay them on it's side (that way the smell can still come out without the chickens getting into it or the rain). I space these out every couple of feet or so all the way around my pen.

Well....that was my day....how was yours???

I wonder what I'll dream about tonite????....Bees..chickens....or snakes??? Ahhhh nature and living with it....makes for a very interesting life!

I am also having a BIG pain in the neck with this blog setup! It will usually be okay until I publish it then it looks wacky! So pardon my progress, I'll figure it out or move to another more user friendly blog source.

TTFN!

Julie